The northern Crusades / Eric Christiansen

1. North-East Europe on the Eve of the Crusades -- Land and Sea -- Peoples -- Interactions -- 2. The Wendish Crusade in Theory and Practice, 1147-1185 -- The Crusade of 1147 -- Supporters and Chroniclers -- The Slav Wars of Henry the Lion and Valdemar the Great -- 3. The Armed Monks: Ideology and Efficiency -- Varieties of Monastic Knighthood, 1128-1237 -- The Monastic War-Machine, 1225-1309 -- 4. The Conquest of the East Baltic Lands, 1200-1292 -- Livonia -- Prussia -- Estonia -- Finland -- 5. The Theocratic Experiment, 1200-1273 -- Popes and Legates -- The Battle for the Convert -- The War on the Schismatics -- 6. The Lithuanian Crusade, 1283-1410 -- The Roads to Collision, 1203-1309 -- The Morality and Recruitment of the Crusade -- Wars and Politics, 1304-1409 -- Strategy and Tactics -- 7. The Crusade Against Novgorod, 1295-1378 -- The Debatable Lands -- The Making of a Russo-Swedish Frontier, 1295-1326 -- The Crusades of King Magnus -- 8. The Crusading States of North-East Europe -- Systems of Government -- Conditions of Men -- Civilizations -- 9. The Withering of the Crusade, 1409-1525 -- Tannenberg and After, 1409-14 -- Confrontations at Constance, 1414-18 -- The Survival and Extinction of the Order in Prussia, 1418-1525 -- Livonia and the Russians, 1400-1562.

"Inspired by the Pope's call for a Holy War, Scandinavian rulers and German military monks conquered and settled Finland, Estonia and Prussia, before turning on the eastern empires of Orthodox Novgorod and pagan Lithuania. These 'Northern Crusades' are less celebrated than those in the Middle East, but they were also far more successful. Vast new territories became and remain Christian, while the central institutions of medieval Western Europe - churches, castles, manors, guilds, parliaments and feudal law codes - were introduced into a dark and inhospitable outer world. Now newly revised in the light of the recent developments in Baltic and Northern medieval research, this overview provides a balanced and compelling account of a tumultuous era."--BOOK JACKET.